Language Attrition - First Language Attrition (FLA)

First Language Attrition (FLA)

The term 'First Language Attrition' (FLA) refers to the gradual decline in native language proficiency among migrants. As a speaker uses their L2 frequently and becomes proficient (or even dominant) in it, some aspects of the L1 can become subject to L2 influence or deteriorate.

L1 attrition is a process which is governed by two factors: the presence and development of the L2 system on the one hand, and the diminished exposure to and use of the L1 on the other (Schmid & Köpke, 2007); that is, it is a process typically witnessed among migrants who use the later-learned environmental language in daily life. The current consensus is that attrition manifests itself first and most noticeably in lexical access and the mental lexicon (e.g. Ammerlaan, 1996 ; Schmid & Köpke, 2008) while grammatical and phonological representations appear more stable among speakers for whom emigration took place after puberty (Schmid, 2009) .

Attrition research has often wrestled with the problem of how to establish the border between the ‘normal’ influence of the L2 on the L1, which all bilinguals probably experience to some degree (as is suggested by, among others, Cook 2003 ), and the (consequently to some degree ‘abnormal’) process of L1 attrition, which is confined to migrants. It has recently been suggested that this distinction is not only impossible to draw, but also unhelpful, as “bilinguals may not have one ‘normal’ language (in which they are indistinguishable from monolinguals ) and one ‘deviant’ one (in which knowledge is less extensive than that of monolinguals, and also tainted by interference from L1 in SLA and from L2 in attrition)” (Schmid & Köpke 2007:3) . Rather, while L1 attrition may be the most clearly pronounced end of the entire spectrum of multicompetence, and therefore a more satisfying object of investigation than the L1 system of a beginning L2 learner (which may not show substantial and noticeable signs of change), attrition is undoubtedly part of this continuum, and not a discrete and unique state of development.

Like second language acquisition (SLA), FLA is mediated by a number of external factors, such as exposure and use (e.g. Hulsen 2000 ; Schmid, 2007 ; Schmid & Dusseldorp, 2010 ), attitude and motivation ( Ben-Rafael & Schmid, 2007 ; Schmid, 2002 ) or aptitude ( Bylund, 2008 ). However, the overall impact of these factors is far less strongly pronounced than what has been found in SLA.

L1 attriters, like L2 learners, may use language differently from native speakers. In particular, they can have variability on certain rules which native speakers apply deterministically ( Sorace, 2005 ; Tsimpli et al., 2004 ). In the context of attrition, however, there is strong evidence that this optionality is not indicative of any underlying representational deficits: the same individuals do not appear to encounter recurring problems with the same kinds of grammatical phenomena in different speech situations or on different tasks ( Schmid, 2009 ). This suggests that problems of L1 attriters are due to momentary conflicts between the two linguistic systems and not indicative of a structural change to underlying linguistic knowledge (that is, to an emerging representational deficit of any kind).

This assumption is in line with a range of investigations of L1 attrition which argue that this process may affect interface phenomena (e.g. the distribution of overt and null subjects in pro-drop languages) but will not touch the narrow syntax (e.g. Tsimpli et al., 2004 ; Montrul, 2004 ; Montrul, 2008 ).